Eren sits, hands clasped between the spread of his legs hung precariously over the edge of one of Paradis’ great, encircling walls. Wall Maria, so named for one of the Founder Ymir’s three daughters. Below, the corralled township of Shiganshina lies untouched the way it was nine years ago.
Why did he choose here of all places to talk?
He squints against the setting sun, its last brilliant golden fingers of light brushing over the distant arching wall of the bastion. This day, now a fixed point in the flow of time, could be marked as when it all began. The catalyst for everything that followed. Eren knows better. He has seen each event that herded them towards the end, every beat of a bird's wings, every drop of spilt blood. But the people would talk of this day as the one that damned them. His name intrinsically linked with the beginning of the end.
Maybe they are right. Maybe nothing was truly set in stone until his player's piece was thrown into the gambit. How many times has he questioned this? Wondered how much, if anything, could be changed?
@naitfall says: ❝ You can’t change the past . ❞
Had he spoken his thoughts aloud? Or had the nature of this place imparted his thoughts to Levi on it's own? The desire so strong it could be felt, heard without words. His next breath shudders, doesn’t quite satisfy the fill of his lungs, and he licks at his lip, drags another down to fight back the angry tears.
“But I tried. When I learned what I could do— What the titan’s power could do, I searched for a point to set it all right. The day Wall Maria came down. That day in the forest…” Eren squeezes his hands together until it aches. “I saw all the different ways it could have happened.”
When he lifts his gaze to Levi’s unwavering stare, he no longer feels nineteen and tired, stretched beyond his years, resigned. He feels fifteen and terrified, immolating from the inside out with anger and pain, starving for connection, for his approval. He knows he will get none. He no longer seeks after it the way he once had. This final explanation is all he can offer by way of apology. “This was all I could do. I traded all of them for this. I’m sorry.”